Mad, The

"The Mad" restores my faith that entertaining crap cinema can still be made. This is one of those movies you watch when you’ve got a bunch of friends over and plenty of beer. Horror comedy is tough, and the last few years we’ve seen a slew of horror-comedies, zombie movies, and horror-comedy-zombie movies. "The Mad" doesn’t break any new zombie comedy ground, but it doesn’t have to be anything but goofy, gory, and funny, and it is. Billy Zane stars as a doctor on vacation with his girlfriend, daughter, and her boyfriend. They make a rest stop at a local hotel/steakhouse. Unfortunately, the meat’s gone bad. Real bad. Anyone eating the hamburger special quickly mutates from meat eater to flesh eater. They have to watch out for the leftover raw meat too–because it’s got a pretty bad attitude as well. I know, it sounds dumb, but it’s a really fun movie. Some of the dialogue is absolutely priceless, such as a great little debate on whether they’re dealing with zombies, or sick people, to which sane replies, "I think you’re all misusing the term ‘zombie’". Zane rules in this movie. He plays it so dry and he’s very funny. I don’t think I ever seen Zane do comedy, he’s usually a jerk or some love interest, but he’s great at it. I would love to see him do another. I love how the filmmakers made the most of their low-budget. Look, it’s obvious they didn’t have much to work with when in the beginning we’re supposed to be at carnival that looks like it’s made up of 10 bales of hay and 5 extras. They work with what they got though. They’ve got a fairly witty script and at 83 minutes the film moves by at fast pace. Reminds me of the best 80’s late-night cable horror movies that I used to be so fond of.